Research for this article was supported in part by a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award; by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) with funds provided by the United States Department of State (Title VIII Program) and the IREX Scholar Support Fund; by an Andrew W. Mellon writing fellowship through the Stanford Humanities Center and the School of Humanities and Sciences; and by the Center for Russian, Eastern Europe, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) at Stanford University. The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs provided invaluable institutional support throughout the writing process. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed here. Earlier versions of this work were presented to Stanford University's “War and Yugoslavia” symposium, Harvard University's Russian and East European Reading Group, and the Belfer Center's Intra-State Conflict Group. I am indebted to all of the participants for their careful readings and stimulating comments. I also extend my deepest thanks to Norman Naimark, James Sheehan, Robert Donia, James Mace Ward, Paul B. Miller, Ravit Reichman, Julia Greble, Mark D. Steinberg, and my two anonymous reviewers for their rigorous critiques and suggestions.

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3. Bryant, Chad, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 2007)Google Scholar; Dragostinova, Theodora, “Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1939,” Slavic Review 67, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 154-81Google Scholar; Fine, John V. A., When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Ann Arbor, 2006)Google Scholar; Judson, Pieter M., Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass., 2006)Google Scholar; Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton, 2002); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca, 2008). 4. For the role of nationalism in genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as a brief overview of the differences between these processes of mass violence, see the introduction in Naimark, Norman, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2001)Google Scholar.

5. Bartov, Omer, “Seeking the Roots of Modern Genocide: On the Macro- and Microhistory of Mass Murder,” in Gellately, Robert and Kiernan, Ben, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Eng., 2003), 79–80, 85-87Google Scholar.

6. See, for instance, Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001); Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, 2006); and Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), esp. chap. 11, “Cleavage and Agency,” which analyzes the differences and relationships between local and national objectives in civil war.

7. Such a rift certainly does not always occur. In his study of Northeim, a town in Nazi Germany, William Sheridan Allen argues that the local agenda of the Northeimers gradually became subsumed, and essentially ignored, by the state. See Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town (New York, 1984), 279 Google Scholar.

8. For a discussion of the separate Ustasha campaigns against Jews, Roma, and Serbs, see the conclusion of Tomislav Dulic, “Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945: A Case for Comparative Research,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 3 (September 2006): 274-75.

9. Early studies that describe Ustasha mass violence include Yeshayahu Jelinek, “Nationalities and Minorities in the Independent State of Croatia,” Nationalities Papers 8, no. 2 (Fall 1980): 195-206; Levental, Zdenek, ed., Zločini fašističkih okupatora i njihoxiih pomogača protiv jevreja ujugslaviji (BelGrađe, 1952)Google Scholar; Viktor Novak, Magnum krimen: Pola vejeka klerikalizma u Hrvatskoj (1946; reprint, BelGrađe, 1986); and Steinberg, Jonathan, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941-43 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

10. Biondich, Mark, “Religion and Nation in Wartime Croatia: Reflections on the Ustasa Policy of Forced Religious Conversions, 1941-1942,” Slavonic and East European Review 83, no. 1 (January 2005): 71–116 Google Scholar; Dulić, Tomislav, Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1941-42 (Uppsala, 2005)Google Scholar; Hoare, Marko Attila, Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Alexander Korb, “The Drina Border, Nationalizing Civil War, and the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-43” (paper, Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota, 2007).

11. Among the best is Dedijer, Vladimir and Miletić, Antun, eds., Proterivanje Srba sa ognjista 1941-1944: Svedocanstva (BelGrađe, 1989)Google Scholar.

12. For a general overview of Sarajevo during World War II, see Donia, Robert J., Sarajevo: A Biography (Ann Arbor, 2006), 168–203 Google Scholar.

13. To derive these figures, I combined data from the last official Yugoslav census in 1931 and a city estimate conducted by local officials in June 1941. See Popis Stanovnišva, 31. Marta 1931 (BelGrađe, 1931) and Sarajevski Novi List, 28 June 1941, 4. I prefer defining people by their ethnoconfessional communities (Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Serbs) rather than their national groups (Croats, Serbs), unless I have evidence that individuals identified themselves or were identified by the regime as a member of a certain national group. Prior to World War II, it was not uncommon for Muslims and Jews to define themselves nationally as Croats or Serbs. Likewise, though in smaller numbers, there were Catholics who were Serbs and Orthodox Serbs who identified themselves as Croats. Thus, although many of the people were not religious, their membership in a particular religious community is a better indicator than “nation” when trying to understand where they fit into the Sarajevo system of communities.

14. A brief overview of the Independent State of Croatia and the Ustasha regime can be found in Ramet, Sabrina P., “The NDH—An Introduction,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, no. 4 (December 2006): 399–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An exhaustive discussion is provided in Jozo Tomasevich's tome on the subject, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, 2001). On the way that the Independent State of Croatia functioned in Bosnia, see Redžić, Enver, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Second World War (London, 2005)Google Scholar. For a historiographical review of the Serbo-Croatian literature, see Kisić-Kolanović, Nada, “Povijest NDH kao predmet istraživanja,” Časopis za suvremenu povijest 34, no. 3 (2002): 679–712 Google Scholar. The classical works on the subject are Fikretajelić-Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 1941-1945 (Zagreb, 1977); Krizman, Bogdan, Ustaše i Treći Reich (Zagreb, 1983)Google Scholar and Bogdan Krizman, Ante Pavelić i Ustaše (Zagreb, 1978); and Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat, Derkroatische Ustascha-Staat, 1941-1945 (Stuttgart, 1964). On the Ustasha party and revolutionary movement in exile, see Mario Jareb, Ustaško-domobranski pokret: Od nastansku do travnja 1941. godine (Zagreb, 2006).

15. Less than 10 percent of the state's Catholic population supported the Ustasha movement and only a handful actually belonged to the Ustasha party before the war. See Lampe, John R., Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 208 Google Scholar.

16. Tomasevich discusses at length the general problems of determining wartime demographics in “Alleged and True Population Losses,” a chapter in his War and Revolution in Yugoslavia. Taking Tomsevich's data as a starting point, I reviewed the census data from 1931 by county (srez). I included all of the counties within the borders of the Independent State of Croatia and excluded those cities and islands that were annexed by Italy. In this way, I estimate that Orthodox Serbs comprised about 31 percent of the population of the Independent State of Croatia. However, as I explain here, the definition of “Serb” was not always limited to members of the Serbian Orthodox faith. It is thus impossible to give a precise demographic figure for individuals persecuted as “Serbs” in Croatia.

17. An overview of the political and military appointments in the city can be found in Brčić, Rafael, “Okupacioni sistem i ustaška Nezavisna Država Hrvatska u Sarajevu (1941-43),” in Albahari, Nisim et al., eds., Sarajevo u Revoluciji (Sarajevo, 1977), 2:259-62Google Scholar.

18. Ivo Goldstein suggests that “Croats were more sharply divided than citizens in most other occupied countries, or in countries allied with Nazi Germany.” See Ivo Goldstein, “The Independent State of Croatia in 1941: On the Road to Catastrophe,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, no. 4 (December 2006): 425.

19. Marko Attila Hoare discusses the problems of interwar Sarajevo and Bosnia at length in his chapter on the interwar period in The History of Bosnia from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London, 2007).

20. For background on the historical development of different nationalist movements in Yugoslavia see: Banac, Ivo, The National Question in Yugoslavia, Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, 1984)Google Scholar. Alliances on the right were common in eastern Europe. For comparative references, see Hanebrink, Paul A., In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890-1944 (Ithaca, 2006)Google Scholar; Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria, 1933-1945, 2d ed. (New York, 2002); and Porter, Brian, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

21. Examples of such behavior can be found in Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine (hereafter ABiH), Poyjerenstvo za Radnje Drž. Hrv.—Sarajevo, box 2 and box 3.

22. Historijski Muzej Bosne i Hercegovine (hereafter HM), Ustaake Građe, document 2335 (29 October 1941).

23. See Bryant, Chad, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946,” Slavic Review 61, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 683–706 Google Scholar.

24. “O dršavljanstvu” (30 April 1941), in Zbornik zakona i naredaba Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, vols. 1, 2, and 7 (Zagreb, 1941), 1:107-8.

25. Examples of specific Aryan legislation can be referenced in Zbornik zakona, 1:40, 109-15 and 2:40.

26. The document began as the Fifteen Principles but later became known as the Seventeen Principles because the Ustasha leaders added two points at the start of the war. A copy of the original principles can be found in Jareb, Ustaško-domobranskipokret, 124-28. Tomasevich analyzes the principles in War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 336-39.

27. Mark Biondich reviews the Ustasha regime's propaganda about Serbs. Biondich, “Religion and Nation,” 87.

28. The exact word used in the laws was ini. For an example, see the racial law on the “Protection of Aryan Blood,” in Zbornik zakona, 1:113-15.

29. Jelić-Butić describes these parallel systems in Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 163-64.

30. While not a common practice, some German theorists did label Serbs a racially inferior group that lacked “blood purity.” See Sevasti Trubeta, “'Gypsiness,’ Racial Discourse and Persecution: Balkan Roma during the Second World War,” Nationalities Papers 31, no. 4 (December 2003): 497-98.

31. Tomasevich, , War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 380-81Google Scholar. Pavelić, for instance, personally intervened to ensure that a Serbian friend from Sarajevo did not fall victim to the anti-Serbian laws.

32. For a brief description of some regional variations, see Goldstein, “The Independent State of Croatia in 1941,” 420-22. This is also apparent in the numerous local laws reprinted in books of Ustasha legal code, such as a law in Karlovac: Zbornik zakona, 7:43-44.

33. ABiH, Narodno Pozorište Sarajevo, box 3, document 1249 (2 September 1942). The report refers to events that occurred in June 1941.

34. See the Command Decision by Slavko Kvaternik, 29 April 1941, in Zločini na jugoslovenskim prostorima u prvom i drugom svetskom ratu, Zbornik Dokumenata (BelGrađe, 1993), 20-21. Local Ustasha officials also reprimanded Sarajevans for hidingjews.

35. Dulic, Utopias of Nation, 361.

36. Istorijski Arhiv Sarajevo (hereafter IAS), Ostavstina Fehim Spaho, box 3, document 694 (6 May 1941).

37. ABiH, Poglavnikov Povjereništvo Sarajevo, box 1, document 343 (6 May 1941). The local Ustasha bureau referred to “domaći Serbs” in its reports but rarely specified exactly who it meant. See, for example, ABiH, Poglavnikov Povjereništvo Sarajevo, Upravni Odjel, box 1, document 83 (8 May 1941). Sarajevo's National Theater classified “domać” partly along political lines and drew distinctions between Serbs who swore an oath to Croatia and those who did not. See ABiH, Narodna Požoriste Sarajevo, box 2, document 735 (12 May 1941). In another variation, the Zemaljski Museum simply submitted a list that categorized more than a dozen of their employees as Aryan Orthodox. See ABiH, Zemaljski Muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, box 37, document 132 (11 June 1941).

38. IAS, Gradsko Poglavarstvo, box 842 (29 May 1941).

39. ABiH, Poyjerenstvo za Radnje Drzavne Hrvatske—Sarajevo, box 3, document 606 (May 1941).

40. On Zagreb's order to fire the Serbs, see a letter dated 13 May 1941, in Zločini na jugoslovenskim prostorima, 46-48. On Zagreb's request to get monthly reports on who the city employed, see the exchange between city and state in ABiH, Javni Ured Rada Sarajevo, box 1, document 609 (11 June 1941-26June 1941).

41. Examples can be found in the court records of ABiH, Sudbeni Stol, collection PL, cases from 1941.

42. On the various policies regarding Serbs’ pensions and employment rights, see HM, Ustaake Građe, document 1566 (17 July 1941) and document 103 (9 September 1941); and ABiH, Javni ured radnje Sarajeva, box 1, document 992 (20 August 1941) and box 3, document 334 (1 September 1941).

43. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 1854 (12 August 1941). On the unemployment problem generally, see ABiH, Javni ured radnje Sarajeva, box 2, document 1070 (29 August 1941).

44. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 1264 (14 June 1941) and document 1600 (30 April 1941).

45. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 1131 (8 May 1941). Spaho also corresponded with top Ustasha leader Marshall Kvaternik on the issue: IAS, Ostavština Fehim Spaho, box 3, document 696 (7 May 1941).

46. For instance, Serbs were prohibited from attending the movies and from wearing certain kinds of clothing. On the general persecution of Serbs, see the reports and decrees in Zločini na jugoslovenskim prostorima, 66, 324, 336-39, 431-32, and 494-95. For laws specific to Sarajevo, see Aleksandar Stajić and Jakov Papo, “Ubistva i drugi zločini izvršeni nad jevrejima u Bosni i Hercegovini u toku neprijateljske okupacije,” in Samuel Kamhi, ed., Spomenica, 400 godina od dolaskajevreja u Bosnu i Hercegovinu (Sarajevo, 1966).

47. Document lent to the author. The original used to be located in BelGrađe (current location unknown) in A/SSIP, F-l, br. 495 (12 December 1941).

48. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 67 (11 August 1941). Forty-five Sarajevo Serbs were sent to Camp Gospić, half accused of being Chetniks, and the other half of being communists.

49. For a brief overview of the Ustasha policy change that August, see Goldstein, “The Independent State of Croatia in 1941,” 422.

50. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 2411 (8 November 1941).

51. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 2403 (7 March 1942). The mayor at the time was Hasan Demirović, a Muslim who openly embraced the Croatian national project and had a Catholic wife. Demirović was vetted and approved by the Ministry of the Interior in Zagreb, and he was required to pledge loyalty to the regime. For background on Demirović (as well as on many other prominent Muslims from Sarajevo), see Nametak, Alija, Sarajevski Nekrologij (Zurich, 1994), 217-18Google Scholar.

52. ABiH, Javni Ured Rada Sarajevo, box 1, document 485 (19 May 1941).

53. HM, Ustaake Građe, document 1263 (26 June 1941). See also Kamhi, Haim, ‘Jevreji u privredi Bosne i Hercegovine,” in Kamhi, , ed., Spomenica, 67–70 Google Scholar.

54. ABiH, Poglavnikov Povjerenistvo Sarajevo, Odjel za socialnu skrb i narodne zdravlje, box 1, document 482 (1 May 1941).

55. Correspondence between the city and state can be found in ABiH, Poglavnikov Povjerenistvo Sarajevo, Upravni Odjel, box 1, document 318 (17 July 1941). Resident petitions can be found in IAS, Gradsko Poglavarstvo, box 843 (June 1941).

56. Državni Arhiv Hrvatske (hereafter DH), Ministarstvo Pravoslavlje i Bogoštovlje NDH, Odjel Bogoštovlje, box 5, document 521 (21 July 1941).

57. For a progress report on the regime's campaign to rid Sarajevo of Serbian influences, see Sarajevski Novi List, 30 August 1941, 7.

58. On the language laws and subsequent tensions between Sarajevo's officials and the Zagreb regime, see reports from the local Office of Labor and Employment: ABiH, Javni Ured Rada Sarajevo, box 1, document 467 (19 May 1941) and document 765 (22July 1941), and box 2, document 1003 (August 1941). See also a warning from Jure Francetić on the importance of using the Ustasha greeting and language in all state offices, which can be found in the Hoover Institution Archives, Tomasevich Papers, box 11 (16 July 1941).

59. Sarajevski Novi List, 4 July 1941, 4.

60. All of these materials can be found in the wartime archives of Prosvjeta: ABiH, Prosvjeta Kulturni Društvo, box 31, document 11 (11 October 1941), document 41 (5 November 1941), document 89 (17 November 1941), document 103 (22 November 1941), and document 138 (11 December 1941); and box 32, document 217 (16June 1942) and document 687 (22 July 1943).

61. See, for instance, IAS, Riznicno Upraviteljstvo Ured za podražavljeni Imetak, box 1, document 172 (24 February 1943) and document 15848 (27 April 1943).

62. Hoare, History of Bosnia, 206-26.

63. This reputation is best known because of the famous Yugoslav war movie, Valter Brani Sarajevo (1972).

64. Throughout the war, local communist leaders complained about their inability to rally more local support in Sarajevo. Even when the Partisans liberated the city, there was widespread skepticism. Partisan and Communist Party reports on this subject can be found in ABiH, Zbirka NOR-a, box 1.1 discuss this topic in Emily Greble Balić, “Posljednji mjeseci ratnogperioda: Sarajevska Iskustva,” in Husnija Kamberović, ed., Zbornik Radova: 60 godina od zavr¡etka drugog svjetskog rata—kako se sjecati 1945. godine (Sarajevo, 2006).

65. In making this argument, I draw on Kalyvas's argument that in civil wars, people can be targeted for personal and petty reasons. See Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 10. I suggest that people could also spare others for personal and petty reasons.

66. To understand how the Ustasha state fit into the system of states in Hitler's Europe, see Payne, Stanley G., “The NDH State in Comparative Perspective,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7, no. 4 (December 2006): 409-15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. DH, Ministarstvo Pravoslavlje i Bogoštovlje NDH, Odjel Bogoštovlje, box 5, document 565 (15 May 1941).

68. ABiH, Poyjerenstvo za Radnje Drž. Hrv.—Sarajevo, box 3, document 381 (3 June 1941).

69. IAS, Državna Ravnateljstvo za Gospodarstevno Ponovo, document 15795 (19 September 1941); IAS, Riznično Upraviteljstvo Ured za podrazavljeni Imetak, box 1, document 11885 (5 September 1941).

70. On the German influence on local Jewish policies, see, for instance, HM, Ustaake Građe, document 2061 (2 September 1941), document 190 (28 November 1941), and document 191 (29 November 1941).

71. ABiH, Povjerenstvo za Radnje Drzavne Hrvatske—Sarajevo, box 3, document 381 (3Junel941).

72. Biondich, “Religion and Nation,” 71-116. In my research, I have also found evidence of group conversions from Orthodoxy to Islam in the fall of 1941; there is no indication, however, that this was state policy or that it was in any way forced.

73. In mid-April, the Germans convened a meeting with top German and Ustasha officials in Sarajevo to discuss the possibility of Italian expansion into Bosnia and, specifically, into Sarajevo. See Hehn, Paul N., The German Struggle against Yugoslav Guerrillas in World War II: German Counter-Insurgency in Yugoslavia, 1941-1943 (Boulder, Colo., 1979), 125-26Google Scholar. On the rumors of turning Sarajevo over to the Chetniks, see Hoare, Genocide and Resistance, 171.

74. For an overview of the Ustasha position on the Croatian Orthodox Church, see “Spas Pravoslavlja,” Sarajevski Novi List, 3 January 1943, 3. See also Ante Pavelić, Hrvatska Pravoslavna Crkva, 1889-1959 (Madrid, 1984). On the Germans’ perception of the Croatian Orthodox Church, see Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 545.

75. DH, Ministarstvo Narodne Prosyjete NDH, Odjel za Bogoštovlje, box 79, document 5189 (16 June 1943).

76. IAS, Gradsko Poglavarstvo, box 818 (21 April 1942).

77. See the Ustasha secret police reports in HM, Ustaška Nadzorna Služba, document 390 (23 June 1942) and document 406 (8 July 1942). See also Sarajevski Novi List, 8 July 1942, 3.

78. HM, Ustaška Nadzorna Služba, document 4035 (15 December 1942) and Sarajevski Novi List, 29 December 1942, 5.

79. Dragostinova, “Speaking National,” 157.

80. On the paradigm of “collaboration” and “resistance” as it is used in scholarship on Hitler's Europe, see the essays by István Deák, Jan Gross, and Tony Judt in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., Politics of Retribution: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, 2000) .Other important recent works on the analytical framework of collaboration include Peter Davies, Dangerous Liaisons: Collaboration and World War Two (Harlow, Eng., 2004); and James Mace Ward, “Legitimate Collaboration: The Administration of Santo Tomas Internment Camp and Its Histories, 1942-2003,” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 2 (2008): 159-201. On European resistance in comparative contexts, see Michael Geyerand John W. Boyer, eds., Resistance against the Third Reich (1933-1990) (Chicago, 1995); and Semelin, Jacques, Unarmed against Hitler: Civilian Resistance in Europe (1939-1943) (Westport, Conn., 1993)Google Scholar.

81. In his seminal work on genocide in Rwanda, for instance, Scott Straus examines and evaluates such local differentiation. Straus, The Order of Genocide.

82. Here it greatly differs from Nazism, which Claudia Koontz argues eventually became an ethical system. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 273.

83. Ian Kershaw, “Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism,” special issue “Understanding Nazi Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 2 (April 2004): 245.

84. Bryant, “Either German or Czech,” 702.

85. Tomislav Dulić suggests that this reversal in policy occurred primarily as a result of the growing communist resistance. Dulić, “Mass Killing,” 274. Although the growing insurgency certainly contributed to the Ustasha policy changes, institutional defiance to the anti-Serbian agenda in Sarajevo began before the armed resistance posed a serious threat to the city.

85. Tomislav Dulić suggests that this reversal in policy occurred primarily as a result of the growing communist resistance. Dulić, “Mass Killing,” 274. Although the growing insurgency certainly contributed to the Ustasha policy changes, institutional defiance to the anti-Serbian agenda in Sarajevo began before the armed resistance posed a serious threat to the city.